Nick Unkovich — master of the green

Press, 17 January 1986, Page 19

Nick Unkovich — master of the green

KEVIN McMENAMIN on New Zealand’s finest fours skip

Imagine Robbie Deans kicking 45 goals from 50 attempts, or Martin Crowe scoring eight centuries in 10 innings. Certainly very difficult assignments, but in achievement they would not be far removed from what Nick Unkovich has done in bowls in the last 10 years.

By its very nature, bowls is a game in which the best players can always be beaten, and one in which luck can often have a bearing. And when it comes to national championships the size of the field alone, piles even higher the odds against one man being dominant for long. But Unkovich has beaten such odds and he now has a record nine national titles, the latest coming in a dramatic extra-end fours final with Ken Watson (Linwood) at the Woolston W.M.C. last Sunday.

It is conceivable that a bowler could be so good that he could beat all comers, what Jahangir Khan is to squash. But what makes Unkovich's record so remarkable is that he has won eight of his nine titles in the team game of fours, six of them in the last eight years and the last three on the trot.

He has been in five different teams, and of the seven he has skipped to victory three have been totally different. When he was at Okahu Bay and had a front trio of Rowan Brassey, Doug Richards-Jolly and Danny O’Connor, Unkovich had a team that was out of the ordinary. Many people thought that little more would be heard of him when he shifted to Rawhiti, a club of modest

playing strength. But Unkovich has continued his reign, even though the composite entry rule introduced some five years ago did enable him to boost his ranks by including his old Matamata partner, Jack Somerville. Chris Tracey and Lou Musin, Unkovich’s lead and second of the last two years, are handy bowlers to be sure, but nothing more. Without Unkovich it is highly unlikely that they would have come close to a national title. Now they have two.

Compared with the high profile that Unkovich has on the green, Tracey and Musin, and Somerville for that matter, are almost anonymous figures. In fact, even after days of play, especially when they both wore caps, spectators still had trouble sorting out. which was Tracey and which was Musin.

Their value to Unkovich was that while neither of them are great draw players between them they would almost invariably give him a couple of close bowls. And with Somerville, still as good a bowler as when he played in the New Zealand gold medal-winning four at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, to follow, Unkovich had a team which he could rely on. Somerville’s driving in some of the key games was an extra strength.

Yet despite his victory, Unkovich is not the bowler that he was five or six years ago. He is troubled by arthritis in the legs, and he also has an eye problem which poses a very real threat to his future.

Always an instinctive bowler, his drawing fluctu-

ated and there was not the same pinpoint accuracy about his driving for which he was once renowned. A few years ago, he would not have twice missed the sizeable target he had to deny Watson the chance of victory on an extra end. But he is still a very crafty skip, and what may seem a bad bowl to others is sometimes placed for a purpose. On the extra end against Watson, Unkovich surprised many spectators by not covering the back with his first bowl. He had two close shots, and Watson had already given notice of his intention to try and get the jack into the lefthand side of the ditch, where his best chance of victory lay. Unkovich chose to draw to the head, and he added a third shot. But it was a cunning bowl, both in Watson’s eye and likely to lock and stay if Watson did make contact as he ran through the head. In other words, Unkovich gambled on Watson, under enormous pressure and with the heavy rain making his task even more difficult, being unable to play the perfect shot. He was right.

Without taking anything away from Unkovich’s effort, luck was very much on his side right through the championship. The Watson game was the third he won on an extra end and he only just got home on the last end in two others. In one of these he actually shook hands in defeat when he misread the board and did

not realise that there was still an end to play. Unkovich hardly looked a winner on the first day of section play. In his opening match, he got a lucky rub to get a second shot on the last end and beat Ken Mcßeath (Opawa), 25-24, and in the afternoon he came from well behind to pip Bill Gannon (Wanganui Services) on an extra end. His second extra-end victory was in post-section play against Terry Scott (Johnsonville) and this was one of the best games of the tournament. Unkovich won the extra end after he had gambled heavily on having the shot he needed to tie the match after 25 ends.

The Scott team thought it had the shot and it only went Unkovich’s way on an umpire’s measure. The previous day Unkovich had an even greater escape. He was 17-3 down to Gary Andrews (St Clair) before coming back to win, 24-22. It was in this game that Unkovich misread the board at Burnside, which was numbered to only 24 ends, and he actually conceded defeat before his team let him know that there was still an end to play, on which Unkovich scored a three to win by two. Watson, too, had some close shaves on his way to the final, none more so that in the first post-section round when he got home on an extra end against Bill MacArthur (Paritutu), whose team, on paper anyway, looked about the strongest in the event.

this year’s Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, and both Stanley and Watson must now be strong contenders as well.

No Canterbury teams lasted to the latter rounds of the pairs, and, as so often happens, this title fell to a little-known pair, Wynston McLachlan and Les Morrison, from an equally obscure club, Clinton, in South Otago.

McLachlan and Morrison survived in some tight finishes, and, undoubtedly, their most important win was their last-end one over Nick Grgicevich (Hillsboro) in the semi-finals.

In the next round, Watson came from a near-hopeless position, 23-12 down after 18 ends, to beat Dave Weaver (Leith). But from then on Watson’s team of Glen Miller, Sonny Calder, and Roy Bailey, was always going like a likely finalist. It was, in fact, a dream final — Unkovich against a top local team — and the way it ended was a fitting climax to a tournament which ran smoothly throughout and produced many fine games.

Peter Belliss’s win in the singles was well received, even if he did beat a local man, Morgan Moffat, in the final. And Moffat’s South Brighton clubmate, Graham Stanley, was fairly rewarded, both for his ability and great fighting spirit, by coming in third. Moffat probably did enough to clinch his place in the New Zealand team for

Grgicevich and his lead, David Reid, looked the best pair around for a long time and Reid could well have earned himself a trip to Edinburgh as the lead in the four. A tournament of such size invariably has a fairytale story. It could be applied here to the Papanui team skipped by Pat Doig, which finished equal third in the fours. The team was originally entered in the name of one of Canterbury’s top players, John Gill. But then when Gill took ill in the first week of the tournament a replacement had to be found. It was too late to get a

strong skip, although Stanley, who did not enter for the fours, came close to answering the call. Instead, and at the last minute, Eric Houston, a 69-year-old player from the Papanui club, was whistled up. Houston had not played in either the singles or the .pairs, and he had not been wanted for any of the fours Trom his own club, and Papanui had the biggest club entry. Doig moved to skip, where he does not have a great deal of experience, Warner Barber, a specialist lead went to third, Owen Tomlinson, the second, changed to lead and Houston came in at No. 2.

Not only was the whole team playing out of position, but because of a back ailment Houston is purely a backhand player. Nevertheless, this team came within one game of the final, eliminating some formidable rivals on the way, and may have needed only a bit of luck on its side to have been Unkovich’s opponent in the final. One shot could have done it: A trail he had on for eight when six behind playing the twenty-second end. It was a tremendous effort, and so, too, was Unkovich’s in proving once again that he is New Zealand’s master fours skip — unquestionably the greatest ever.